Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one whoobeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word "accident" makes sense.

The people we keep standing in the anteroom of our favor either start fermenting or turn sour.

Knowing things halfway is a greater success than knowing things completely: it takes things to be simpler than they really are andso makes its opinions more easily understandable and persuasive.

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

[Heraclitus had] pride not in logical knowledge but rather in intuitive grasping of the truth.

I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.

Assuming that we have trained our imagination to denounce the past, we will not suffer much from unfulfilled wishes.